really you got me there dawg
They are getting political pressure to keep the numbers down. Some people didn't like those high numbers we had in the past.
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I think without help the natural range would be established about 100 to 200 miles south of you Kurtr.
you do. So when Gst has said that they release pheasants he is told it really does not matter as the pen raised ones wont make it. Show where south dakota is stocking any pheasants where the gfp is placing pen raised birds to supplement the population of pheasants. Prove me wrong and show how the population is supplemented here are the past stats from 1919....
View attachment pheasant-stats.pdf
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PHEASANT INTRODUCTIONS AND DISTRIBUTIONRecords of initial pheasant introductions in South Dakota from the late 1800s and early1900s are too vague or incomplete to provide accurate numbers, origin or exactlocations of releases. According to Trautman (1982), Dr. A. Zetlitz of Sioux Falls hadseveral varieties shipped to South Dakota in 1891. These pheasants consisted ofringnecks (assumed to be of the English ringneck variety) and a few of the golden andsilver varieties. These birds, along with others hatched and reared at his home, werereleased at the junction of the Split Rock and Big Sioux rivers in Minnehaha County. It isreported that some of these birds were seen as far away as Yankton County by 1902,but the population eventually disappeared from uncontrolled hunting.The first successful introductions occurred in 1908–1909 on farms found in SpinkCounty. According to Trautman (1982), A. E. Cooper and E. L. Ebbert introducedseveral pairs from a Pennsylvania game farm in 1908. Although it is mentioned that allof these birds were lost during the following winter, they again released a few dozenbirds (origin unknown) that are believed to have helped establish the pheasantpopulation in that local area.H. P. Packard, H. J. Schalke and H. A. Hageman of Redfield released an unknownnumber of pheasants in 1908 on Bert Hageman’s farm just north of Redfield along theJames River. That same year, it is reported that A. C. Johnson released 25 pheasantssouth of Frankfort on a ranch owned by A. C. Johnson. In 1911, the Redfield Chamberof Commerce released another 30 pair of pheasants on the Bert Hageman farm(Trautman 1982).While other private releases continued in the early 1900s to establish pheasantpopulations, the Department of Game and Fish (now SDGFP) began releasingpheasants in 1911 and continued until 1919. The first open season was held in SouthDakota for one day in Spink County in 1919.Once populations were established in central and eastern South Dakota, SDGFPtrapped and transferred some 33,000 pheasants to Corson, Fall River, Lawrence,Meade, Perkins, Pennington and Ziebach counties from 1926 through 1941. Trap andtransfer projects continued to supplement areas of the state that experienced significantlosses due to severe winter conditions and to fill unoccupied areas containing suitablepheasant habitat (Hipschman 1959).
Although trap and transfer projects were used to fill suitable pheasant habitat primarily inwestern South Dakota, this technique has not been utilized since the mid-1990s except - 5 -for small stockings at the newly acquired Hill Ranch Game Production Area (GPA) in FallRiver County. As a result of public pressure during periods of low pheasant densities,SDGFP has in the past paid landowners and other interested groups to raise andrelease pheasants. This state-sponsored program was discontinued in 1990 due tomounting evidence that this technique is ineffective.After the success of initial stockings and the saturation of the state’s traditional pheasantrange, pheasant populations have been particularly high on 4 occasions: the early 1930sfollowing the Great Depression and drought period when much farmland was idle; themid-1940s during and just after World War II when again much habitat wasunintentionally created on idled cropland; once more in the early 1960s at the peak ofthe Soil Bank Program; and more recently as a result of CRP acres.It is not surprising that these periodic high pheasant numbers were the result of thewidespread availability of high quality pheasant habitat. Large scale declines in uplandhabitat across much of the pheasant range resulted in far fewer pheasants during the
a little more history, this comes directly from the pheasant management program on gfp site here is the link
http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/small-game/pheasants.aspx